Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
AT: “Great Ape Project is Speciest”
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AT: “Great Ape Project is Speciest”APES ARE A GOOD STARTING POINT—LANGUAGE AND INDIVIDUALITY INCREASE PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE OF THEIR CLAIMS ON THE MORAL COMMUNITY Bernard E. Rollin, professor of philosophy, Colorado State University, 1994, The Great Ape Project: equality beyond humanity, eds. Cavalieri & Singer, p. 214-5 Though splendidly different, these animals are like us—enough like us to trigger the essential and deep empathy so important to including them in the moral community. This natural effect has been enhanced and deepened by the work which has been done on communication with the great apes by the Rumbaughs, Premack, Patterson, Fouts, and others. Leaving aside the objection of those scientists who seem hell-bent on proving that no animal can really have language, the sort of communication that does go on certainly counts as language in the minds of ordinary people. It is clear that apes can insult, joke, lie, ask, entreat, express affection and numerous emotions, grieve, teach one another, care about pets, rhyme, and so on. Such a level of communicative ability, be it language in the Chomskyan sense or not, so dramatically gives a “window into the minds” of other animals, that it cannot fail to further augment our fundamental empathy. When this is coupled with the exhaustive fieldwork done by people such as Jane Goodall, it illustrates countless cases that can only be understood in terms of mental states like ours. As Goodall puts it: “All those who have worked long and closely with chimpanzees have no hesitation in asserting that chimpanzees have emotions similar to those which in ourselves we label pleasure, joy, sorrow, boredom and so on…Some of the emotional states of the chimpanzee are so obviously similar to ours that even an inexperienced observer can interpret the behavior.” Closely related to this latter point is the individuality manifested by the great apes. (As I have pointed out elsewhere, one can find significant evidence of individuality among all animals; but in the case of great apes, as in the case of humans, it cannot be missed.) Whereas scientists, for example, can treat all laboratory mice as indistinguishable and interchangeable, one simply cannot do so with apes. They dramatically manifest differences in personality, temperament, preferences, and behavior which are inescapable. Thus they tend to manifest themselves as persons, worthy of designation by proper names. Recognition of a being’s individuality is a powerful spur to according that being moral concern; conversely, depersonalization is a major step towards disenfranchisement. It is no accident that the Nazis worked very diligently to make all concentration camp inmates look alike, so that there seemed to be an endless supply of them, and individuals didn’t matter.
Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 118 If speciesist arguments work to the advantage of nonhuman great apes (and I’m not convinced of that), they do so at other animals’ expense. I’m not saying that we must emancipate either everyone or no one. “Welfarists” often falsely accuse abolitionists of being “all or nothing.” I know that emancipating African-Americans didn’t emancipate any nonhumans. I know that granting voting rights to African-American men didn’t secure voting rights for women. I know that virtually no judge alive today would declare an ostrich or a crayfish a person. But emancipating African-Americans didn’t rely on racist arguments, and emancipating the first nonhumans shouldn’t rely on speciesist ones. Someone might counter, “Isn’t it specisist to deny nonhuman great apes the chance to become legal persons? GAP is just being practical. They simply want to do what will work. No matter how it’s obtained, personhood for any nonhumans will be so groundbreaking that it will help all nonhumans. It will breach the legal barrier between humans and other animals.” I completely support efforts to obtain great-ape personhood, provided that they’re nonspeciesist. As with “welfarism” versus rights, the question is what will work in the full sense of work—truly work for the animals in question, work over the long term, work without benefiting some animals at the expense of more-numerous others, work without perpetuating the very speciesism that personhood for any nonhumans should erode rather than reinforce. I’d sob with joy if chimpanzees became legal persons, as long as their personhood wasn’t couched in terms that will make it harder for other nonhumans to obtain personhood. AT: “Great Ape Project is Speciest”CAN ADVOCATE PERSONHOOD FOR GREAT APES IN NON-SPECIESIST WAY Joan Dunayer, Animal Rights Activist, 2004, Speciesism, p. 119 Why not seek great-ape personhood in non-speciesist ways? Why not build the foundation on which animal equality must rest? Non-speciesist arguments advance everyone’s interests. They’re necessary for full emancipation. At the same time, they don’t preclude starting with relatively few nonhumans whose sentience is especially obvious to humans. Given current attitudes toward nonhumans, someone pleading for chinchilla, spider, or sea-horse personhood would be laughed right out of court. However, arguing for great-ape personhood doesn’t require speciesist argumentation of the sort presented by GAP. As noted in the previous chapter, courts have affirmed the “principles of equality and respect for all individuals” regardless of their “intelligence” or ability to “appreciate” life. The individuals in those cases have, of course, been human, but the same egalitarian principles could be applied in a legal case seeking rights for, say, chimpanzees or dolphins. In fact, arguing based on sentience alone might be less threatening to judges than arguing based on human-nonhuman similarities. Citing abilities such as nonhuman great apes’ ability to learn human language suggests that animal rights advocates seek nonhuman participation in human society. We don’t. We’re not asking that any nonhumans have freedom of speech or voting rights. So, what difference does it make if nonhumans can learn human languages or show other human-like capacities and behaviors? We don’t want nonhumans to remain in human society (which invariably would keep them subservient). We want them to be free and independent of humans. In some ways, that’s less threatening than giving rights to a new group of humans, who then share economic, social, and political power. Nonhumans wouldn’t share power. They would be shielded from ours. It’s right to seek legal personhood for nonhuman great apes. It isn’t right to do so in a speciesist way. As currently conceived and presented, GAP reinforces a species hierarchy, with great apes ranking above all other animals. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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